Belgian Police Arrest 14 in Suspected Terror Cell

By DAN BILEFSKY; Graham Bowley contributed reporting for this article.

Published: December 1, 2005

The Belgian police arrested 14 suspects on Wednesday in a series of dawn raids aimed at breaking a terrorist network that the authorities said was involved in attacks on American targets in Iraq, including a suicide bombing by a Belgian woman in Baghdad three weeks ago.

The Belgian antiterrorist police said the group was recruiting volunteers across Europe to assist the Jordanian militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a driving force in the Iraq insurgency.

The arrests, in the cities of Charleroi, Antwerp and Riemst, as well as in Brussels, involved suspects of Belgian, Tunisian and Moroccan origin, the police said, adding that they had unearthed evidence of other planned attacks against American targets in Iraq.

Glen Audenaert, director of the Belgian federal police, said Belgium was determined to destroy the cell, which is believed to have links to others across the continent. ''We want to dismantle this network, which we knew was on our territory and which aimed to send volunteers for the jihad to the battlefield,'' he said.

Terrorist cells linked to Al Qaeda are believed to be using Belgium as a recruiting ground and an easy source of fake passports and other documents. The police described the Belgian suicide bomber as a white woman who had converted to Islam after marrying a radical Muslim man of Moroccan origin. ''This is how she came into contact with the organization that allowed her to become a fighter for jihad,'' Mr. Audenaert said.

The bomber herself was the only person to die in the Nov. 9 attack, which was carried out against an American military convoy south of Baghdad. The police said a Belgian passport was found on her body, along with papers showing that she had entered Iraq from Turkey. The suicide bomber's husband was killed in Iraq in a separate incident, the police said.

The police in Paris said on Wednesday that they had arrested a 27-year-old Tunisian man who they said had links to the Belgian network and had been an acquaintance of the suicide bomber's husband. The police said they had evidence that the man had made frequent trips between Paris and Brussels and was providing logistical support to the Belgian network.

With its geographic location in the heart of Europe, and with its large Muslim community in which terrorists can easily hide, Belgium is viewed as a breeding ground for terrorists.

This month, 13 Belgian and Moroccan citizens went on trial in Brussels; they are accused of taking part in last year's Madrid attacks on four commuter trains that killed 191 people and in a bombing in Casablanca that killed 45 people in 2003. The suspects face charges of providing a safe house, false papers and logistical help to members of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, a militant group linked to Al Qaeda that is said to be responsible for both attacks.

The police say Belgium has also become a center for the procurement of false identity papers by terrorists. Two days before the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, two men posing as television journalists set off a bomb during an interview with Ahmed Shah Massoud, the military leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. The two terrorists were traveling on fake Belgian passports, blanks for which had been stolen during break-ins at the Belgian Embassy in the Netherlands and Belgium's consulate in Strasbourg, France.

Photo: An officer with items seized yesterday from a Brussels house. The Nov. 9 suicide bombing by a Belgian woman in Iraq is being investigated. (Photo by Jacques Collet/European Pressphoto Agency)